Engagement – Science and Engineering Day
Well, we’ve done it, our first engagement event – and we picked a good one – Southampton Universities Science and Engineering Day, with more than 5,000 visitors! ‘Go big or go home’ as they say.
What a day it was! The room was packed from start to finish, with hundreds of visitors coming to chat and play some of our educational games. I’ve got to be honest we were a little concerned to see we were close to a fabulous exhibition involving dinosaurs – how can our little microbes compete with dinosaurs?!? Well, luckily for us, our little microorganisms held their own and created some fantastic discussions.
We wanted to explain our work in a fun and engaging way, whilst also giving visitors a taste of what our research is like.
So, we set up a few activities:
- Learn how to streak bacteria (with the role of bacteria played by colourful paint). We brought loops, petri dishes and paints, and encouraged visitors to have a go at streaking their own plates. This was a definite hit with youngsters especially.
- Bacteria and Biofilm board games! Some of our creative team members, Lyuboslava and Yasmin, created intricate and interactive ‘Pac-man’ style board games, with little biofilm or bacteria characters who you had to roll around the board and collect pollutants – this was enjoyed by all ages and was a great way to demonstrate our work in bioremediation.
- Microscope – you can’t discuss microorganisms without a microscope to show the audience. This proved so popular we will make sure we take a second one for our next event. We had local water samples, as well as a selection of prepared slides with all manner of curios to study courtesy of Prabhaker. The little goggles and children’s lab coats added a little extra fun for the kids too, as they got to practice being a scientist.
As well as our activities we had our animation video playing, with hand-outs and even colouring sheets available to take away and help share awareness of our work – these beautiful designs were created by the talented Yexin (keep an eye out for more of these designs going forward – they were very popular!) Of course, no successful engagement event would be complete without an enthusiastic team. We all had so much fun talking to the public about our work and our aims for the future. So, a huge thank you to Prabhakar, Yasmin, Yexin and Lyuboslava who joined me for the event – you were all fantastic.
We would also like to thank the team at Southampton who pulled off an absolutely spectacular day! Thank you for having us and allowing us the space to discuss all things environmental biotechnology.
And finally, thank you to all who came along and added to an exciting, enthusiastic and incredibly engaging day, it was wonderful to meet you all.
-Nicola Heaven, Knowledge Mobilisation and Science Communication Officer
Science and Engineering day is a free family-friendly event taking place across Southampton’s Highfield Campus and Boldrewood Innovation Campus, with more than a hundred interactive hands-on activities, workshops, live shows, talks, art performances and laboratory tours. Learn more here: Southampton Science and Engineering Festival 2025 – Home
